We had a great meeting this past Monday, July 21st. Since we separated into two groups for most of the meeting, I’m mostly recapping about stuff that happened in the group I was in, because unfortunately I’m not talented enough to be in two places at one time.

Our group spent a lot of time getting into valuable discussions related to the benefits of advertising. One person shared that he’s been struggling a bit with communicating at his finance job. A member had suggested that talking about how we stutter “more” at certain times is less judgmental than saying that we stutter “worse” sometimes. While it might seem like a small thing, we can probably all agree that being aware of how we view our own stuttering (and how we talk about it) has a lot to do with how we then react to our stuttering.

Another member mentioned that when you advertise and/or educate someone who might not understand stuttering, you aren’t just helping yourself. You’re also helping another person who stutters down the road because essentially that’s one more member of the public who now knows about stuttering. This is a great way of thinking about advertising, and I hadn’t looked at it this way before. This is not to say that we each have a “responsibility” to advertise – I think that would be putting a little too much pressure on ourselves since it’s challenging enough for many of us to advertise in the first place (especially when starting out). I see this more as “here’s another great benefit of advertising, and another reason to experiment and give it a try if you’re on the fence about advertising”. Another person told us that when she interviewed for finance internships, she would tell employers that even though speaking could be challenging sometimes, that she was always more than capable of handling the job.

Many other interesting points all around!

Also, shout out to Rahima who rocked it during our meeting with great input, and then DOUBLE rocked it by performing an original poem about stuttering at a slam poetry reading downtown in front of a LOT of people….and then won poet of the night!!!! Congrats Rahima and thanks again everyone for a fantastic meeting!